Getting ready for number 2

Here is a photo of the setup for my second painting.......Lemons on a Blue Plate.







First I did a study in gray to get the forms and the highlights worked out. I was concerned about the plate.....how to make it look like ceramic. I would do the finished picture on a new canvas. This is not an underpainting just another painting entirely.

Then I played around with the colors to get the values for the lemons and the plate and color for the background. I decided the lemons would be three different hues of yellow shaded with darker and more neutral values of yellow. Instead of using the complement, violet, to shade I decided to use it as the background. I wanted the lemons to really shine and I hoped the compement as the background would enhance the yellow. The plate was a mix of ultramarine blue and pthalo blue. The challenge was to make the plate look like glass with light highlights and reflections from the lemons. I did mix yellow with violet, lower right corner, and decided it dulled the yellow much more than I wanted. I couldn't make the yellow reflections in the plate look yellow. They always looked green. Need to learn more about that!

Here is the finished picture. My monitor makes the background look more blue than it really is.